A digital asset management (DAM) system typically includes computer software and hardware which assists or facilitates the performance of digital asset management tasks. These tasks may include the ingestion, annotation, cataloging, storage, retrieval and distribution of digital assets. The digital assets being managed are collected and stored in a digital format. The digital assets may be annotated and cataloged using metadata associated with the individual assets or associated with groups of assets. The metadata tagged with the assets can describe, but is not limited to, a static description of the assets, the history of the assets, current ownership, current rights of use and/or access, object sizes, medias used, etc.
Ingestion, in a digital asset management context, is the process of introducing digital assets into a DAM system. This process includes assigning descriptive terms or values to the digital asset metadata. By assigning these to the metadata, it allows the digital assets to be found within the DAM system which stores them in a way in which they can be accessed by the DAM system users. Ingestion may also include a phase such as converting non-digital format information into a digital format. Ingestion may also include a phase of tagging rights of use to incoming digital assets.
A DAM system may manage a set of digital assets, such as images, textual content, and other types of components which are available to DAM system users. A user may be a web developer creating a website. The DAM system stores the digital assets by type, such as HTML header, style sheet, image description, etc. Also, the DAM system may store static attributes for the digital assets, such as file type, image size, creation date, etc. Web developers may select certain generic digital assets from a DAM system database based on their static attributes and use the selected generic digital assets in constructing a website.
A DAM system may be satisfactory for creating generic websites, and is often used by web developers for creating websites for companies or other entities. However, using digital assets, described merely in terms of static attributes such as image description, file type, image size, creation date, and other similar criteria may not be the best approach to providing an optimum website. This is especially true, when the website is trying to invoke an action, such as online purchases, from a target group of. For example, generic promotional and product information displayed on a website may be disconnected from a target visitor's interests. This can occur if the web developer constructs the website by selecting digital assets based on generic and/or static property descriptions, and may result in an unfavorable experience for the target visitor.
Furthermore, target customer preferences and the average responses by a target customer group in responding to content on a website tends to change over time. This may be caused by changes occurring in social customs or new norms of behavior being adopted by the population within different market segments. Thus, the criteria as to what is considered desirable within a market segment may change on a regular basis. As a result, there is a constant struggle for website owners to manage the relationship between total visits to their website, to maximize the appeal the website content has on targeted types of visitors among the total visitors to the website, and achieving a desired outcome through use of the selected content in a website. Furthermore, the struggle to manage the website is exasperated by the selection of generic digital assets for the website.